By Abbi Wilt, MLJ Director of Communications & Projects
I grew up as a dual citizen in Canada, which meant that the fall didn’t bring around just one Thanksgiving—it brought two. When I was really young, our first Thanksgiving of the year (around Indigenous Peoples’ Day in October) often happened alongside my godparents in Southern Ontario. We’d then mark American Thanksgiving in November with a pie. After all, we still had school.
When our family moved to Tennessee in 2009, these Thanksgiving traditions flip-flopped. We marked Canadian Thanksgiving with a nod and a handful of texts to family and friends up north, but devoted nearly a week to American Thanksgiving by trekking up to my grandparents’ place in the Great Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina.
Thanksgiving memories in Canton, North Carolina are near and dear to my heart. For nearly a decade, our immediate family descended upon a home that was first built by my great-grandfather on family farmland. My mom drove homemade pies all the way from Tennessee, and my grandmother often pulled out veggies she had canned, like green beans, to round out a table punctuated by color. I foraged branches from the forest to hodge-podge a tablescape and wrote each person’s name in curly font on makeshift place cards. After dinner, my siblings and I played soccer on a bumpy field in the neighbor’s yard. And every Black Friday, we went into town to shop local businesses up and down a Main Street that was palpably ready for Christmas.
I’ve had the joy of reflecting on these memories more recently with an opportunity I was given to share them with StoryCorps. If you’re not familiar, StoryCorps is a non-profit dedicated to archiving American folklore, and many of the organization’s stories are housed in the Library of Congress—the “largest single collection of human voices ever gathered.” In a collaboration between StoryCorps and Butterball, a new Thanksgiving archive has emerged this November; anyone can upload their holiday traditions and memories online to be included. (Here’s the link, if you’d like to participate.)
My husband and I went to New York to record our stories in person. We walked up to a small trailer in the middle of a park emblazoned with the StoryCorps mantra: Listen. Honor. Share. Inside, there was a soundbooth. “It’s just a conversation,” our moderator encouraged. “Look at each other. If you look at me, I’m going to redirect you to look at your partner. You’re just talking.” And for an hour, we talked about Thanksgiving.
There’s something quite intimate about speaking to someone you love for a full hour in a sound-proof room without any disruptions or phones. We prompted one another on stories and laughed about ridiculous memories. We worked from a list of questions and interjected our own bits of context. We initially chose our words carefully in the microphone, but quickly forgot to overthink. Time went on outside; New York City bustled. But in that little quiet cocoon of stories, there was just us.
I’m so grateful for the work StoryCorps does and the opportunity to have our family Thanksgiving stories archived in the Library of Congress, but this experience also reminded me of just how life-giving and meaningful oral storytelling can be. When we sit around a Thanksgiving table with those we love, whatever form that takes, we’re getting a chance for intentional, uninterrupted connection. Listen. Honor. Share. To me, that’s the recipe for stronger relationships.
We listen to the stories of others with an open heart.
We honor their unique perspectives, their pain, their hopes, and their experiences.
We share about ourselves with vulnerability.
As you’re sitting around your holiday tables this November and December, I want you to keep this recipe in mind. How can asking questions invite meaningful conversation into your home? How can bridges be built through shared experiences and memories? How can we encourage legacy through vulnerability in the vast range of American experiences? How can we become a more empathetic society just by listening? Here are three conversation tips, as shared directly with my husband and me in that tiny New York StoryCorps soundbooth:
Be authentic and follow your curiosity.
Let pauses or silences linger.
Ask follow-up questions that encourage details.
We’ve also compiled a list of questions to prompt your conversations around the dinner table. And when you’re ready to write those stories down, Memory Lane Jane is here to help.